Sunday, June 10, 2012

Red Sox Break Record With Sellout Streak

Sunday's game against the Nationals marked the 745th consecutive sellout for the Red Sox at Fenway Park, according to the team. It's an honorable record and a showing of the fans' dedication to the team but reports recently, calling the legitimacy in to question, have put a cloud of doubt over the achievement.

The Boston Globe, among others, said this of the streak in an article posted May 4 of this season,

"The Sox embrace an alternate definition that permits them to declare a game sold out even if hundreds of tickets go unsold but others are distributed for free."

The Red Sox give a relatively large amount of complimentary tickets away to games at Fenway, according to the article, which is counted toward the sellout. By doing this, they leave the door wide open for speculation that they could give away the remaining amount of tickets each night to declare a sell-out. In this case, the streak loses much of its luster.

Boston also counts standing room only when figuring the total attendance for each home game, which also allows them to actually sell less tickets yet keep the record intact on a nightly basis.

Like many things in this day and age, the sellout streak seems to come down to marketing more than anything else. Being able to say the team has sold out on 745 consecutive occasions just generally sounds good, but also like many things in Beantown, the truth was exposed to the public, making most fans shrug the achievement off.

One fact remains though. 745 times in a row, there have been at least 37,495 Red Sox fans enjoying a baseball game at Fenway Park. That's something to be proud of, especially since it started in 2003, before the team won that magical World Series.